Re: Germanic - maran/Gothic -mara
From: Ton Sales
Message: 66899
Date: 2010-11-30
Responding to Brian and João:
Germanic Wigamera (soon contracted into Wigmera)
appears as "Latin" Vimaranus in Historia compostelana (1586).
Coromines notes that the forms derive
from the Germanic nominative and, more often, from the genitive
(Wigmarans).
We find:
-from the nominative:
"Wimar" (and "Guimerano", the same person), a 834 AD bishop
of Girona.
"Gimerra", a "carcassonensi episcopo" on a 917 AD inscription in
Aude, near the walled city.
"Guimara, presbiterus" (975 AD),
"Guimara" (a 976 AD man's name in
northern --now French-- Catalonia), and again "Guimara" in two
documents --one century apart-- from Vilamajor, not far from
Barcelona.
-from the genitive:
Gimeranis (already in a 1058 royal document emitted in Barcelona
related to a castle to be built in that place), to which
Guimarans, Guimeran, Gimerá and Guimerà historically follow as the
-sequential- official forms for the name of the present town, in
central Catalonia.
J. J. Nunes cites the well-known Portuguese town of
Guimarães and finds the name (or its
Leonese-Castilian homologous) extending to the East, well into
Spain: in León as a place and in Zamora as a
12th c. patronymic ("Iohan Gimaraz"). Near Sahagún we find two
13th c. feminized versions of the nominative ("La Guimara" and
"las Guimaras").
The first attested forms of Catalan Guimerà are, leaving aside the
"castrum gimeranis" already cited, are "s. vimariani" and "wado*
gimerane" (*with variants "guado" and "quado"), both "in comitatu
rossilionensi" (= Northern Cat.). There is also a "Gimerani" (=the
present town), "Guiamerà" (a place in Majorca, in a
16th c. document) and both a "Mas de Guimerà" and a
"Tossa de Guimerà" in Valencia. In more western or southern places
we find "Els Guimerans" and "Les Guimeranes". As
an easternmost occurence of the name we find a street in
the Catalan-speaking town of l'Alguer, in Sardinia, called
"(carrer de) la Guimerana".
Ton